God's Design

Making Him Known

by Sally Michael, Gary Steward

This full-color guide teaches children about God's true design for men and women. They will learn how God made us in his image, how sin distorts God's good design, and how they can pursue godly manhood and womanhoodbeing thankful for how they are made and glorifying God in how they treat others. Each chapter includes application questions and activities.

Genres: Childrens

120 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2016

About the author

Sally is a co-founder of Truth78 and has authored curricula and books that are all marked by a passion for developing God-centered resources for the spiritual development of children. For 16 years, Sally served as Minister for Children at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, under the leadership of John Piper and her husband, David. Sally and David live in Indianapolis where they serve families at College Park Church. They enjoy spending time with their daughter Kristi, daughter Amy and her husband Gary, and three grandchildren.

Reviews

[Jeanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

God's Design is a complementary study for your family to grow together as family. It is a strong foundation that begins with understanding what complementary means. I loved the definition that was given to complement something is to make it complete. So many families today are competing with each other creating chaos instead of peace. God's design is for the family to
complete each other by embracing and understanding their gender roles. By this, we share as families what God is like and display the gospel.

Starting from the beginning in Genesis which is always a good start, your family together will discuss, read the scripture and apply with a family activity. Each chapter reveals the glory of God's design for his creation. It is a proclamation of His glory and how we as a men and women can share his love by these roles. Along with the proclamation in this study, we also must understand and express with our children how our roles as male and female reflect the image of God. It is evil that sets out to destroy that very image. To destroy what God has made.

I highly recommend this book and the series of book that Desiring God ministries has brought to families to cherish God's word together as you learn together who God is. It is by knowing God we can find satisfaction in Him. What strength it will be for families to be committed to value what God values.

A Special Thank You to P & R Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

God’s Design is the latest book in the Making HIM Known series for children written by Sally Michael and published by P&R Publishing. This book is highly relevant for today today and even more so than when it was published just seven weeks ago! In this book, Sally Michael takes a look at God’s design for men and women; both as individual and distinct genders and in their interaction in marriage, singleness, parenthood, and the church. Her operating assumption is that there is a distinction between the genders and that this distinction is purposeful and doxological. It is purposeful in that God, as the creator and designer of men and women created the sexes with distinct functions, roles, and distinct glories. It is doxological in that the ultimate purpose of gender distinction is the glorification and praise of the creator.

In her introduction to God’s Design, Sally Michael starts off my saying that the book “was written to give parents an opportunity to present solid truth to their children and to encourage real-life application of that truth”. She designed it to be interactive, understandable, theological, and full of practical applications. In my assessment, she succeeded in each of these design elements. She starts off the book with chapters on God as creator and His intention for the sexes. She dispels any potential accusations about extreme patriarchy in a wonderfully written chapter called “Men and Women Are Equal” and then goes into showing how we have rebelled and continue to rebel against God’s design; both as men and as women. After urging the reader to recover God’s design she gives Biblical examples of manhood and womanhood including areas in which wrong thinking has crept into our minds. Then she tackles the topics of purity, marriage and singleness before jumping into applications as husbands & fathers, and mothers & wives. She concludes with chapters on how we were made for work and urges us to trust God’s design and conform our lives to it so that we might fear and trust in His name.

I was really impressed with Sally Michael’s gift of communication. This book is written in such a way that older children can read and comprehend Biblical and theological truths and that parents of younger children can read it to them to encourage dialogue. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that this book is only valuable to children. Adults will benefit from her writing as well. Her ability to clearly articulate Biblical truth is a breath of fresh air in a world of writers who seem to value complexity rather than simplicity. Her simplicity in writing however should not be confused with simplicity of mind. Sally Michael writes with a profound sense of understanding and clarity and yet manages to break the theological language down into sentences that are easy to swallow.

I would recommend this book for parents with children of all ages. With all of the confusion about gender lately it is a timely highly relevant topic. It would work perfect as an addition to a homeschooling curriculum for children around 8 to around 12 years old (parents will want to judge this based on individual learning styles). It would fit perfectly into an extended teaching time by mom or dad as well.

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This review first appeared on my blog at http://www.teleiaphilia.com/